


Crash and Burn

by pweeyuh



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Argentina, Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Injury Recovery, Multi, OC Teammates - Freeform, Permanent Injury, Post-Series, Post-Timeskip, UPCN San Juan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:41:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27240607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pweeyuh/pseuds/pweeyuh
Summary: He hated flying. Everything about it seemed so disjointed. The performance of order, the pretending that everything was going smoothly and according to schedule was what bothered him the most. He hated how panicked he was, too. That made everything worse.
Relationships: Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou, Azumane Asahi/Nishinoya Yuu, Oikawa Tooru/Ushijima Wakatoshi
Comments: 5
Kudos: 20





	Crash and Burn

Tooru could feel his teeth chattering. Rain was still coming down in sheets, slicking his hair to his forehead. His windbreaker had soaked through, and now every layer of clothing was cold and wet. His chest hurt, a jolt of white-hot pain travelled from the base of his spine through his veins until it filled him. He had been silent before, but now he couldn’t stop crying.

Ángel was kneeling at his side. He was speaking softly, moving the hair from his eyes, trying to cover him with his own raincoat, but Tooru couldn’t hear him.

“¿Qué?” he whispered. He realised he was biting his tongue as his teeth chattered.

“¿No me oíste? Te pregunté si tenés frío.”

“Oh. Sí.”

“¿Tenés dolor?”

“Sí.”

“¿Te cuesta respirar? ¿Hablar?”

“Sí. A ambos.”

“Ángel,” Roberto took a step forward, placing a hand on his shoulder, “pará. Dejá de hablarle a él. Lo vas a cansar.”

“Va a morir,” he protested weakly. Tooru’s eyes were starting to roll back into his head. His breathing was shallow. Ángel shook him until the two of them were looking at each other.

“No te dormís, ¿vale?”

“Sí.” Tooru knew what was happening. He was shutting down. Bleeding out. Freezing. He was so cold. The darkness that made the corners of his vision fuzzy seemed so warm, so inviting, but Ángel and Roberto kept shaking him so he wouldn’t sleep. A few others––Gabriel, Hugo, Iván––tried to set out to find cell service while Ángel, Paco, and Enrico got to work trying to move the rocks that were pinning Tooru down. Beni was holding his knee, trying not to grimace. 

Ángel decided finally that it would be best to carry Tooru to the trailhead on his back. Roberto warned him that this was unwise, and that they should focus on keeping him as warm and dry as they could until the others managed to call an ambulance, but Ángel had made up his mind. He slid both his arms under Tooru’s back and hoisted him up onto his shoulders. That was when the screaming started. He couldn’t tell where it was coming from––he could hardly hear it over the roar of the wind and rain, it sounded so far away––but after a few agonising seconds he realised the screams were his own.

The pain was more than he could handle, and the way Ángel was dragging him along made his arms ache and pulled too much on his back. Roberto noticed this, and, slowly, scooped the crying setter into his arms and carried him halfway down the senda, where he handed him back to Ángel.

“Will you text my boyfriend?” he sniffed through his sobs, too tired to think about forming the right Spanish words. “My passcode,” he gasped as Roberto stumbled and jostled him a little too much, “Is 1336. He’s the most recent conversation. Just tell him I love him.” Ángel slipped his hand into Tooru’s back pocket and produced the phone, typing in his passcode. He stared blankly at the screen.

“Your phone is in Japanese,” he noted, swiping forward and back on the screen a couple of times. Tooru sighed.

“Here, give it to me,” he shifted so he could reach out his hand to take the phone, but it simply slipped from where it was tucked into his lap and hung limp at his side. Fear gripped him. His shallow breathing picked up, and he began to cry again.

“What is happening?” he gasped. “I can’t move.” His teeth were chattering so hard it was making his jaw hurt. He tried to move his arm again, but no matter how hard he strained himself he could only just bend his elbow.

“Oh my god,” he wailed, “I can’t fucking move!”

“Hey, calm down,” Roberto whispered into his wet hair. “I’ll hold the phone for you so you can talk to him. And look,” he pointed out maybe a kilometre ahead of them, “we’re almost to the trailhead. I’m sure Mateo and Fidel have called an ambulance for you and Beni.” He turned over his shoulder and addressed the latter. “¿Qué andá, boludo?”

“Estoy bien,” he nodded, giving the two of them a thumbs-up. He was limping, using Enrico’s shoulder as a crutch.

There was a little lean-to at the trailhead that the rest of the team was huddling under, and as soon as they were in shelter Roberto began to peel off the many layers of clothing that Tooru was wearing. He dug down to the bottom of his pack for a dry t-shirt and pair of pyjama pants and changed him with as much care as one could change the clothes of an immobilised man at the base of a mountain. Tooru bled through the back of the shirt instantly, but at least the rest of his clothes were dry. He was getting weaker and his cheeks, which had previously been bright red, had completely drained of colour. His lips were starting to turn blue.

“Do you still wanna call your boyfriend?” Ángel asked. He was rubbing circles into Tooru’s skin, hoping the contact would warm him up. Tooru nodded, and Ángel propped him up against one wall of the lean-to. Upon directions from Tooru, he dialled the number and held the phone up to his ear. Tooru was struggling to breathe, but he didn’t seem as tired as he was before. Everyone seemed hopeful.

They all listened to the phone ring, and they wondered how there was any service at Fitz Roy. Tooru broke down when the call went to voicemail, but at the tone he drew in a deep breath, and smiled his same old smile.

“Hi, Toshi-chan,” he said softly. “It’s probably really early over there right now, so sorry for calling. I just wanted to let you know that I,” his voice broke a little, “that I really love you. I love you so much. I don’t think I’ll be able to call for a long time, so I just wanted to let you know. I love you, okay? Bye-bye.” Ángel hung up, then put the phone on Tooru’s lap. He had closed his eyes, and his shivering had ceased. Roberto tried shaking him awake a few times, but it was useless. He’d spent all his energy on the phone call.

“Carajo,” Enrico pointed at him, “¿está respirando o qué?” All eight of them turned their heads to face Tooru. Ángel started crying. Tooru wasn’t moving, wasn’t breathing. Nobody could hear a pulse. Roberto, in the calm way he did everything, lay him onto his back and began CPR.

“De vez en cuando,” he said, his voice strained, “es posible resucitar alguien muriendo de hipotermia. Tenemos que mantener RCP.” He instructed Beni and Enrico to strip and lay on either side of Tooru, hoping they weren’t too cold to warm him with skin-to-skin contact, and they kept him as warm as they could until they heard the roar of a helicopter above them. Mateo and Ángel ran out to meet it.

Roberto, the most level-headed, was the one selected to travel with Tooru and Beni. He sat quietly at the back of the MedEvac, watching as the paramedics stabilised his teammate’s C-spine, performed CPR, and provided him with supplementary oxygen, all the while trying to raise his body temperature and dry him off. In his collected way, he responded to every question they asked him. “His name is Tooru Oikawa. He’s Japanese. We’re with UPCN San Juan. This was a team building exercise. There was a rockslide. He was pinned under the rocks. Yes, he hit his head. He passed out, yes. He vomited, too. He was pinned under the rocks for two hours. When we got him out he was unable to move.”

It was almost three hours until they got to Río Gallegos. Tooru flatlined twice. Roberto’s calmness was starting to wear thin. He didn’t want to lose his setter, his friend. After a night of sitting in an uncomfortable chair in a far-too-bright waiting room and tapping his foot on the linoleum, the news he received was crushing: Tooru was alive, but barely. He was hypothermic and developing pneumonia in his left lung; most likely concussed from the fall which had broken three of his ribs, his right hip, and his left shin in the fall; and, worse of all, his spinal cord had been severed at T-12, although Roberto had no real idea of what this meant until he googled it from the (relative) comfort of a motel room. 

The doctors at el Hospital Militar patched him up the best they could, but the surgeries he needed required more specialists than they had in Río Gallegos. After two days, he was cautiously flown to Buenos Aires. The rest of the team would go back to San Juan and Roberto would stay on with Tooru, who had not opened his eyes since he closed them on Fitz Roy.

  
  


Wakatoshi had made it a habit to check his phone. When he was younger, he never looked at his phone. Even in college, he was wishy-washy about answering texts. He only ever communicated by email or phone call. It wasn’t until the summer break after his first semester in college, when Tooru came back to Japan from San Juan, when they first went out. After that, he made a Twitter, an Instagram, and he actually checked them both frequently.

He knew Tooru was on a team-building trip to Patagonia, a place he wasn’t aware really existed outside of the fleece sweaters until Tooru told him he was going there, but not much else. For the first few days, Tooru would send him pictures when he had service. The views were beautiful, and it seemed like Tooru was having fun, but he missed the routine of his nightly phone calls after his shower. On the fourth day, Tooru left a message on his answering machine. He thought it was rather strange––his voice sounded odd and he kept breaking up––but shrugged it off. He just assumed they were prolonging the trip, or that he was going deeper into the mountains. But, the next day, the team was back in San Juan. And, at their next game, Tooru and two other guys, Beni Rojas and Roberto Suárez, weren’t in the starting lineup. Beni had sprained his knee. There were no updates from Tooru. Wakatoshi sent him a text, then another, then another. Radio silence.

And then on the news, he saw Tooru’s picture. He looked up from the ficus he was watering, and grabbed the remote, turning up the volume. Tooru had been hurt in Patagonia. He was in Buenos Aires for treatment. It was unclear as to whether or not the injury would affect his career. He had not spoken to the press. Wakatoshi felt all the blood drain from his face. His heart was beating up to his throat. Immediately, without thinking, he grabbed his laptop and booked a one-way flight to Argentina.

As he packed, the messages began to roll in. People he hadn’t spoken to in years, people he was sure hated him, all flooding his inbox with well wishes and genuine concern. Kageyama Tobio, Tooru’s sworn enemy, seemed the most concerned. He sent Wakatoshi nearly every article that discussed Tooru’s injury, asking what happened, if he knew anything. But he didn’t. He didn’t know a thing. And he was scared. He made sure to pack things he knew Tooru missed about Japan. He didn’t expect to be able to get milk bread through customs, so he stuck with non-edibles: a blanket that he tried to steal whenever he’d come visit, old sweatshirts he knew smelled like him. And, before he left, he bought a little plushie, a blue dinosaur. He was sure they had teddy bears in Argentina, but he wanted to bring Tooru something from home.

He hated flying. Everything about it seemed so disjointed. The performance of order, the pretending that everything was going smoothly and according to schedule was what bothered him the most. He hated how panicked he was, too. That made everything worse. He couldn’t stop playing the voicemail Tooru had sent him over and over, realising how wrong it sounded, how wrong  _ he _ sounded. He sounded weak. He could even hear him gasping for breath at one point in the message.

The guilt hit him during his layover in Frankfurt. He hadn’t picked up the phone. Tooru had called him, and he hadn’t picked up the phone. Was Tooru hiding from him? Did he think he didn’t care? He sent another few texts. None of his messages were even read. It had been two weeks exactly since Tooru sent the message. Wakatoshi couldn’t remember a time Tooru was capable of ignoring anyone for longer than two hours without needing to get the last word, so his silence opened up a new set of anxieties: what if he was really hurt? What if he was dying? What had happened in Patagonia? He found himself stuck in his own world, googling what wildlife lived in the mountains of southern Argentina and how likely one was to survive a puma attack, until he heard his name over the Intercom. Blushing—something he hadn’t done since he was in junior high—he boarded the plane and sat down.

He didn’t know how Tooru did it, flying from Buenos Aires to Tokyo took something like 29 hours, and that wasn’t counting layovers. Tooru did it multiple times a year, and always had energy straight off the plane. He was so strong. He had always known what an impressive athlete––no, it wasn’t fair to make this about sports, what an impressive  _ man _ ––Tooru was, but somehow it only struck him as he was sitting on a plane, on a flight Tooru must have taken forty times in the past three years. He missed him. He missed him so much. Afraid of what he might see when he arrived in Argentina, he purchased in-flight WiFi and began to read as many “hiking trip gone bad” stories as he could, which probably just made everything worse.

He was bone tired when he arrived in Buenos Aires, but he took advantage of his early arrival time to sit in a cafe and search through almost every tweet under the Oikawa Tooru Twitter tag to see if any crazy fan had figured out which hospital he was being treated at. He was shocked at how respectful the media was of his privacy, not even reporting what had happened, but since he hadn’t been updated at all, he found it frustrating.

Most of the Twitter sleuths had pointed towards the British Hospital of Buenos Aires as the most likely choice, so Wakatoshi decided to try there first. The people at the desk were all-in-all unhelpful, but eventually a woman entered the nurse’s bay that seemed sympathetic to the desperation in his voice.

“Are you looking for someone?” she asked. She had a pretty voice. He nodded.

“Yes. Oikawa Tooru,” he shook his head. “No, sorry. Tooru Oikawa.”

“How do you spell it?” Slowly, he spelled Tooru’s name. She nodded. “And your name?”

“Wakatoshi Ushijima.” Her face fell.

“Write that one down and I can copy it.” she pushed a pen and a pad of sticky notes towards him. He grabbed them, and, without thinking, scribbled his name in Kanji. She scrunched up her face when he handed the pad to her.

“I don’t know what this says,” she said frankly, and his eyes went a little wide.

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine. You can dictate to me again, if you want.” He nodded, and she obliged him.

“Are you a relative?”

“Yes,” he said immediately, then paused. “No. He’s my partner. I should be his emergency contact.” She typed loudly for a moment, then hummed.

“His emergency contact is Roberto Suárez.”

“Oh,” he nodded curtly. “That makes sense.”

“Listen,” she sighed, “I’m probably not really supposed to let you in. There have been a ton of people pretending to be that guy’s family. Media and stuff. Can you prove to me that you two know each other?”

“Of course,” he pulled out his wallet, and produced the photograph he’d taken the summer before: They were sitting on the beach at Shirahama, and Tooru was planting a big kiss on his cheek, although he could hardly keep his lips closed he was smiling so wide. Even Wakatoshi was smiling, but only slightly. The woman inspected the photo for a moment, then nodded.

“You two are a sweet couple,” she noted as she handed the photograph back, “give me your hand.” He extended his arm over the counter, and she wrapped a bracelet saying “VISITANTE” in bold letters around his wrist.

“He’s in room 317. Intensive care. There are signs in English.”

“Thank you,” he said, and he meant it.

He pushed all the thoughts from his head as he stood in the elevator. He realised his mind had gotten away from him on the plane, and he’d created all these awful scenarios in his head. He knew in his heart of hearts that Tooru hadn’t been mauled by a puma, but fear still gnawed at his stomach when he thought of it.

There was a voice coming from Tooru’s room. It was too deep to be his. A blond head was standing at the foot of the bed, speaking on the phone in Spanish.

“Hello?” he spoke. The man whipped around, held the receiver against his shirt, and quirked an eyebrow.

“I’m sorry, sir, he’s not taking interviews.”

“I’m Ushijima,” he said dumbly. “He’s my partner.”

“Oh my god!” the man gasped. “You’re the boyfriend. Come in. Close the door behind you.” He grinned, and extended a hand. “I’m Roberto Suárez. Good to meet you!”

“Ushijima Wakatoshi,” he murmured. His eyes were glued to Tooru. He seemed so small, attached to however many machines and tubes and the like.

“He’s doing much better.”

“This is better?”

“Relatively, yeah.” He couldn’t be bothered to speak to Roberto anymore, and he seemed to get the message, making his way slowly towards the door.

“I’m heading out,” he announced, and Wakatoshi nodded without turning to look at him. He pulled the blanket from his bag and spread it out over Tooru, tucking it under his chin as gently as he could. He was sleeping. He looked peaceful. Unable to help himself, he leaned over and pressed a kiss to his cheek.

Tooru stirred at the contact, letting out a little groan. His eyes opened partway, weighed down by his thick eyelashes, and scanned the room lazily, eventually settling on Wakatoshi. He looked pensive, his tongue pressed to the roof of his mouth as he thought of the right thing to say.

“What are you doing here, Toshi-chan?” was what he settled on. His voice was breathy. His chest heaved for a moment after he finished speaking. Wakatoshi wanted to cry.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. If he talked any louder he wouldn’t be able to maintain his composure. “I’m so sorry, Tooru.”

“Why are you sorry?” he asked. Wakatoshi didn’t answer, instead choosing to grab a chair from the corner of the room and push it right up to Tooru’s bedside. Once he was seated, he took Tooru’s hand, counting all of his fingers, then taking the other and doing the same. All ten were still there. He let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding in.

“What are you doing?” he asked, and Wakatoshi shook his head.

“Nothing. How are you feeling?”

“I don’t know. Alright.” His eyes narrowed. “How much do you know?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay,” he nodded, letting his head relax back on his pillow. “Good.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean what I said. That’s good. I’ll tell you in a bit.” This made Wakatoshi feel unsettled. He hated it when Tooru hid things from him like this. His chest tightened, and he focused all his attention to the IV on Tooru’s hand, held down with medical tape.

“That looks like it pinches,” he said, more into the air than to Tooru in particular, and worked to smooth the skin that was bunched up under the tape. Tooru sighed.

“I’m paralysed,” he whispered, “I can’t feel it.” Wakatoshi’s blood ran cold. He shook his head. He couldn’t tell if he’d heard him correctly.

“What?”

“I can’t move my hands yet. I don’t think I’ll ever walk again. I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?”

“You came all this way,” his voice was small. “I can’t even hug you.”

“That’s fine,” he tried to be comforting, but his voice sounded unsure. “I don’t mind. Can I hug you?”

“You have to be careful. My spine is still weak. They need to stabilise it again.”

“That sounds painful.”

“It’s fine. I can’t feel it.” Wakatoshi drew his eyebrows together, and, with a look of extreme concentration on his face, slid his arm under Tooru’s shoulders and leaned over him so their chests were touching and his chin was resting in the crook of his neck. He was careful not to lift Tooru off the mattress and hurt his spine or disrupt any of the tubes or monitor patches sticking out from under his hospital gown. The initial contact made him gasp––not quite out of pain, just out of shock––but, after a bit of hesitation, he settled into Wakatoshi’s touch.

“I missed you,” he admitted feebly. “I was so scared. I was so cold, and I––” His shoulders began to shake. He was sobbing.

“Don’t talk. You’re making yourself agitated.” He could feel Tooru nodding against his chest. “You’re fine.” He stood there, hunched over the bed, his face hidden in Tooru’s neck, for a few more minutes, then stood. Tooru had fallen asleep. His breaths had deteriorated into soft wheezes, and his eyes had slipped shut. His face was still screwed up into one of discomfort, but he’d stopped fighting the pain. He just let Wakatoshi hold him. He was exhausted, partly from the medication he was on and partly from trying to process all the information Roberto had loaded onto him since he’d regained consciousness. He was paralysed. He’d be able to move his hands again one day, but now he should just focus on resting. He would suffer from seizures due to his brain being without oxygen for a prolonged period, and he’d need to start physical therapy as soon as he could. It all felt like too much, but, too stubborn to even float the possibility of retirement, Tooru would cut his losses and put in as much energy as his body allowed him towards his recovery. He would not admit it, but he was frightened.

When he first awoke, the day before Wakatoshi’s arrival in Argentina, the first thing Tooru did was try to stretch. When he began to raise his arms and realised nothing was happening, he was gripped by an intense dread. He recalled this sensation of helplessness, of feeling the loss of control of his own limbs, from Fitz Roy. Immediately he thought of his career. If he was unable to move, he was unable to set. He was ruined. He had nothing, he  _ was _ nothing, without volleyball. Volleyball was an extension of Tooru himself, and he refused to give it up so easily. Sitting there, hunched over, propped up by Wakatoshi’s embrace, he made a pact to himself that he would return to the court one day, no matter how long it took him.

He  _ would _ play again.


End file.
